


How I Lived, and Why I Lied

by VievaWood



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Survival, Synthesis Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 03:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4812968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VievaWood/pseuds/VievaWood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Janet Shepard survived creating synthesis and ending the Reaper War, and why she lied about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How I Lived, and Why I Lied

When I was told that I could end the Reaper War, end the cycles that led to it, I knew I had to. But how could I choose to save humanity and destroy the geth, destroy EDI? How could I choose not to? A third option. Synthesis. My life in trade for everyone else's. What choice did I have? So I threw myself into the Catalyst, and gave my life. And that was it, right?  


Only apparently not. It would have destroyed a pure human, but after Lazarus, I wasn't fully human anymore. I had so many mechanical parts I was already part machine, already the template for the future I was trying to create. And as the totality of my choice screamed across the galaxy, smearing itself across everything, rewriting reality in an instant to include organic and synthetic in all life, the tiny bit of me that remained Janet Shepard reached out to EDI and the Normandy and whispered, “Catch me.”  


And she did. My organic bits died, but my synthetic bits retained who I was, my memory, my reality. And given synthesis, it was shockingly easy for EDI to build me a new body from what we had. Even as she worked with Dr. Chakwas, rebuilding a body, I was able to talk to my friends, a voice inside the Normandy. Able to plan, to decide. And we decided that Janet Shepard died. The central point, the person everyone wanted as martyr and criminal and savior and everything else they wanted to pile on me died. My work was done.  


My funeral was beautiful. Had I a body at the time, I would have cried. It was captured on vid, the Normandy saying goodbye to me, putting my name up on the fallen in duty wall. And it was true. I had fallen in duty twice, died twice in service. I had no more to give. I was ready to live now, to take care of myself. To love, to be loved, no longer as secondary to what needed to be done but as a primary life. I was ready to be happy. And since I could still talk, even before my body was ready for me, we had everything planned out.  


Yes, Janet Shepard died. But Janet Alenko, Kaiden's wife, lived just fine. And there were plenty of colony worlds where a military man could retire, take up farming. Disappear into being just one more couple, building a new life after the war.  


Really, the hardest part was arbitrating how Garrus, Liara, and Tali put together and officiated the wedding.


End file.
